I (Referencing Kevin from Exceptional Delaware who may or may not take down an article he wrote which would be a travesty to our job of maintaining a historical record of educational issues in this amazing time of change) .… had an email forwarded to me this evening concerning an incident at Newark Charter School earlier this week. While checking to see if something happened, I found the News Journal already covered this. But what the News Journal didn’t publish was the email Newark Charter School’s Greg Meece sent to the parents about the altercation between a teacher and a student. You can see that below. But I have several dozen questions about this incident which didn’t even come up in the article. While I respect the fact that Meece can’t talk about the incident because it involves an employee, the comments on the News Journal article spin many different tales…

He said the incident was in a classroom earlier this week and involved a female high school student and teacher in a physical altercation over a cell phone. He added the cell phone did not belong to the student. Meece said neither was at school Friday, but no formal disciplinary action has been taken at this time.

Excuse me? A teacher has a physical altercation with a student and NO arrest was made? Seriously? Since when can a teacher have ANY type of physical altercation with a student? Has the student and teacher been out of school all week? Where is the due process for the student and the teacher if NO formal disciplinary action has been taken at this time? Was “informal” disciplinary action taken?

This is the definition of a physical altercation, with certain words bolded for emphasis:

A physical altercation is defined as being an argument, dispute or altercation that involves force or physical aggression. Physical altercations differ from verbalaltercations because physical contact is involved. These types of disputes are sometimes referred to as fights and may legally qualify as battery.

A peaceful gathering? Maybe for the students, but according to this commenter on Facebook, the school wasn’t too happy about it…

That is a very different yarn than the one spun by Greg Meece in his email to the parents and the News Journal:

“The principal of our building spoke to the students and thanked them for their voices and being heard,” Meece said.

What happens at Newark Charter Schools stays at Newark Charter School… until a student and a teacher have a physical altercation that is. I don’t know why Newark Charter School treats itself like it is an isolated school cut off from the rest of the state. How much goes on there that the public has no clue about? If someone didn’t tip off the News Journal or myself on this, who would have known? But we see teachers getting arrested in Delaware. For more egregious things than this, but it happens. Perhaps the teacher was defending herself. But according to the above commenter, it was all a lie. If there was any physical force involved, were the police notified? The Senate Bill which minimizes when the police are called, Senate Bill 207, passed in the Delaware General Assembly this year, but it was very specific in its language to specify “between students”. It did not mention staff members. Which means Newark Charter School, if they did not notify the police, may have broken the law. Whether it was a student or a teacher, if the matter became physical, they are legally obligated to do so. Why didn’t the News Journal question that aspect of the story?

Scandals? Sweeping things under the rug? I thought NCS was this model of good behavior and nothing happened there…

It is hard to believe this particular commenter in one aspect. If this happened Monday, there is no possible way the parents could have sued the teacher in four days. They may have talked to an attorney, but nothing moves that fast. But they are absolutely right that students should have a voice. The threats coming out of the administration when students were having a peaceful sit-in could have been treated with more respect if the above commenter’s comments are true.

What does Newark Charter School’s code of conduct say about this kind of incident? It doesn’t reference this specific type of situation, but it does say this:

Referral to Police Agency is required for students who intentionally and offensively touch a staff member who is attempting to break up a fight or who is attempting to keep a student from injuring him/herself or others. Recommendation for expulsion may be considered.

But they do reference House Bill 322, which the Delaware General Assembly passed in 1997:

In addition to any action taken by school officials, the school will comply with the notification requirements of H.B. 322 which includes notification of police.

This was in a section that talked about fighting. I hate to keep beating on the same drum, but if this was an incident that was so minor, why would Meece refer to it as a “physical altercation” which has a very definitive legal meaning?

Are parents allowed to discuss this incident? On the closed to members only NCS Parents Facebook page, it was a huge topic of discussion this week until the moderator deleted all the comments about it to protect the identity of the student and the teacher. Even though all the parents already knew about it. This was reported to me by a few parents of students who belong to that page.

Newark Charter School needs to be more open and honest with parents about situations, instead of putting on an “everything’s fine” face with the News Journal. There was a lot Meece could have talked about with this article, but I’ve always been told Meece is a very smart man and chooses his words very carefully. But no public school receiving taxpayer dollars should think they can isolate themselves from transparency. They aren’t North Korea.

I’ve heard of many teachers at NCS getting fired with no form of due process whatsoever. Delaware charter schools do not have teacher unions which, in this case, would have given the teacher protection if they were fired over this. But we will most likely never know because of the isolationist mindset coming from this school…

As a student at Newark charter for 10 years who participated in the sit in, I can attest that this article is greatly flawed. Newark charter certainly does not “isolate” itself and frankly, it’s evident that the author is not in any way connected with the school. I think the manipulation of the school’s emails and the conclusion based on inaccurate information is simply a low blow to not only Newark Charter, but charter schools everywhere. Contrary to what you may believe, the police are involved in the case and Newark charter has no intention of hiding any information from the law. In fact, Newark charter administration has little power in this situation; lawyers have been hired to deal with this situation legally. Please leave this situation to Newark charter admin, the family of the student, and the police. We certainly don’t need nor want misinformed commentators (who have no connection to the school whatsoever) to form inacurrate conclusions.

I’m a citizen of the state. When you guys get some of your rewards, part of my tax dollars pay for that. When you get to keep all the transportation money over your budgeted amount, who helps pay for that. I do. So you can be charter strong all you want. I’m up for transparency strong.

Whoever you are MB, learn your place. When it comes to NCS, you are absolutely right. I have no idea where anyone’s money goes. How about making all that student body activity money fully transparent. That would be a good place to start. How about filing IRS 990 tax returns like the other 25 or so charters in the state already do. And don’t tell me to leave Delaware. What you are doing is perpetuating the perception most people already have about NCS around the state. It’s not about winning or losing, but I guess you wouldn’t know that MB.

You need to look up the definition of hypocrisy. This student said that they don’t want misinformation leaked, so here they are trying to inform. While I don’t agree with the fact that they gave specific information, I do agree that you should not pretend your opinion matters on this topic and that this should be left to the people it applies to. We wanted people to know that we are not perfect students who don’t rebel. That’s why we were okay with the other article. But we had no intention of having others look into personal business.

You may remember… Only two states were accepted in the first Race to The Top Competition… Delaware..*yay* and Tennessee. Same agenda. Same connections to the Governor’s Association and Chiefs For Change… Same influences, etc…

Let me tell you where Tennessee is now…

In three weeks, they start their school year… yes, August 3rd. This past year they instituted a non-renewal policy that said if you’re scores were not above standard, your contract would not be renewed… AND you would be marked as ineligible for rehire.

Obviously the strict discipline enforced on teachers has made the upcoming year to be one of survival; not excellence…. Just keeping open the doors will be a challenge, heaven help the test scores of 2017…

Also keep in mind that many of those teachers whose contracts were not renewed, were once considered excellent teachers before we started using Common Core’s tests. from the district’s website:

Sixty-one percent of MNPS teachers hold a master’s degree or higher and 99.75 percent are highly qualified in at least one subject area

That 0.25 % not qualified matches up with the TFA candidates…..

Which proves as all have said, the folly of putting all education’s blame on teachers… Now, you have no teachers so what are you going to do?

Well the MNPS plans to contract out to a computer teaching service for its classes having no bodies in front of it… as well as wave all certification requirements for anyone willing to stand up in front of a class.

Yes.

NOW FOR THE GREAT NEWS…………………………………………………………………………..

This isn’t happening in Delaware.

Why?

Mostly because of you, who objected to insanity and would not be silenced… Though corporate money could buy out Earl Jacques, corporate money could buy out Dave Sokola, it could not buy out parents, it could not buy out teachers, and it could not tamper with the communication system set up between them…..

As a historian I am prone to look for those important moments and speculate had they gone differently, what the new outcome would be… I know that is a weakness of mine. But saying so, if one were to ask this historian where Delaware avoided the train wreak its sister is now going through, I would have to point to the pivot as being John Young of Christina’s Board of Education…

Keep in mind we are a small state. The Metro-Nashville school district alone has 80,000 students. That is two thirds the size of our entire state school system and they are but one district. Therefore each citizen here has a larger percentage of a voice in their government than do almost everyone else.

We also do not have a television station all turn to for local news. There is a definite knowledge gap which most smart people have found is best adequately filled through the blogosphere. Our blogosphere has more investigative reporters then the entire state’s news conglomeration of radio stations and newspapers combined…

As a result of all of this, here it was hard to only give “one side” of the story (though Dave Sokola certainly tried). The other story got out, sometimes too late to change legislation, but not to late to now hold those perpetrators who pushed it, accountable for the damage they have caused Delaware’s children in lost opportunities…

(Remember how our educational measurements soared, up until they hit the Common Core legislation these crooks pushed through?)

With all those kept in mind, it was John Young who pointed the direction long before anyone else publicly, that corporate schemes were behind this new “push” for improving education… I confess, I remember glossing over Kilroy’s exclamations of Markell’s Wall Street connections with glazed eye before John passed on an illuminating tidbit on what was wrong with American education…

What struck me in that video was how on a map, it was very obvious that the diagnosis of ADHD in children starts in Oklahoma and grows exponentially as it heads to the east Coast. Pretty much mirroring the graph for average amounts of extra disposable income after necessary expenses have been met on a state by state basis….

That and the failure Common Core was having among children who were in the test classes for it… Failures as high as 85% in those test classes, which the DOE still as yet has not divulged. These failures included some of the previous years’ top students… Something was seriously wrong.

Bottom line, Delaware did not go down the path as did Tennessee because the people exerted enough pressure here to slow the process and force the inclusion of parents, teachers, and “active” administrators in the formulation of policy….

No, we still do not have a perfect solution… we still need to fight on… But in all glaring truth, we also do not have Tennessee…..

And that, is a victory for truth, justice, and the will of the American people…. We should be proud of ourselves for what we stopped…. and we should tip our hats to John Young in congratulatory thanks for first sounding the alarm which mobilized us into action….

Today it is headquarter for Hudson Management, a wide ranging assortment of investments scattered across the winds, some of whose seeds have drifted close to home. Some of which include the wooden Fairfield Inn, Rehoboth Beach, Sam Yoder and Sons, Village of Five Points. Other investments include:

Self-storage investment firm with 12 locations in the US, and 2 locations in Ontario, Canada

As would any investor, zeal against taxation would become a cause celebre because taxes sap some of the return off investments… And Christian Hudson has almost zealfully crusaded against any form of taxation….

Those of us who have sparred with Christian Hudson across DelawarePolitics.net and Delawareright.com are familiar with his single-mindedness whenever anything interferes with the personal accumulation of money. Nothing wrong with that; were I raised differently it would make sense to me too.

But why would someone with no bone to pick in Lewes (Milton), employee his Robo-tax-cop machine to bother people in a district far-far away?

The first and simple reason: it costs nothing for him to do so.. The apparatus is set up; calls are free; and all it takes is 5 minutes to leave a greeting on tape, and then off to the Sussex Country Republican Convention while voters in Christina drop what they are doing when the phone rings, rush to their phones, only to hear a taped message telling them their taxes (but not their time) are wasted and they need to vote no on the upcoming increase….

For whether your taxes are or not wasted, here is a first rate breakdown of their funding… Basically Christina District is one of the most efficient districts in the entire NATION and if it weren’t for the abject poverty endemic in both Wilmington and the Route 40 Corridor, they would be considered one of the best districts in the United States… For the real fact is, those who are paying school property taxes across that small swath of state, are carrying the bulk of the weight for up to 90% of its students…. The real fact is that all the bad press being used to smear that district, is strictly because of the poverty that district bears; from the DOE website, we see one student in every two lives in families making less than $16,000 a year. Here is a quick succession of charts from the above Delaware-Liberal article.
Over 98% of all salaries go directly to people in the buildings or bus drivers. From a quick search over multiple educational funding sources, that seems to be the highest of any United States of American school district….

Of course. We understand there may be personal legitimate reasons, (such as living on limited pension income that is being too-quickly drained by ever-increasing corporate fees), which could push you not to want even one more dollar of money taken from you which you can’t spend on absolutely necessities. It’s just like there are reasons you don’t always put money in the collection plate as it’s passed by you in your church. You are entitled to vote and that is why we put it up to a vote. But be advised. Outside influences spreading mis-truths to achieve a certain outcome from which they are completely insulated, such as Christian Hudson and everyone who votes his way solely on ideologically grounds…. are putting loaded guns to the heads of children and pulling the triggers, especially in a place where one out of every two children comes from an under-$16,000 income family.

You should be making $18,000 more a year right now. And would, except for the inequality put in place beginning with the trickle down policies of Ronald Reagan… now more appropriately called “tinkle” down economics…

The bottom get pissed on.

The heavy line shows where you would be if the average rate of growth from across the years ’79 to ’10 were applied evenly. The lighter line shows the reality….

99% of us are all earning an average of $18,000 less than we should be… So how does this break down?

The bottom fifth of households saw their income go up by 29.2 percent, well below the 53.4 percent average.

Income for the middle fifth of households grew by a measly 19.7 percent.

But how did people a little higher up, but not at the very top, do? A little better, but still below average: households between the 81st and 90th percentiles—so in the bottom half of the top fifth of the income ladder—had just 39.1 percent income growth. Again, well below that average of 53.4.

So how far up do you have to go before you hit the average? The 91st to the 95th percentile almost got there, with 53 percent average growth. But they fell just short. Households between the 96th and 99th percentile seriously exceeded 53.4 percent, though. They had average income growth of 78.1 percent.

That’s nothing compared to the top 1 percent, though: Their income grew by 244.7 percent, close to five times the average.

D. Tax the top 1% appropriately… Include Capital Gains as income. Tax Corporations at the same rate as individuals. Raise the top marginal percents to these levels…

Over $1 billion in income… tax rate of 60%

$500 million to $1 billion in income = 55%

$100 million to $500 million in income = 50%

$50 million to $100 million in income = 45%

All the rest: no change….

On top of this, allow all money put into capital improvements, to be deducted dollar for dollar. (Capital improvements require building things). The rational is that if you put that money into capital improvements, you are improving this nation as much as if you were directly paying taxes to it. Perhaps more so.

This can be done, but it must be done with a Democratic Executive, and over 60 Democrats in the Senate (or change the filibuster rules), and a fully Democratic House. That is what has to happen for any change. If it doesn’t happen then Americans rightly get what they deserve for being stupid. Because we all know that Republicans are quite happy with the very fact that you ARE making $18,000 less than you should and quite happy that they are the ones receiving it, not you…….

Delaware’s Unions, particularly the Building and Trades, have over-stepped. In a world where the one percent owns 45% of America’s assets, where billions are being spent to destroy unions in every capacity, where the middle class has succumbed to its worst level since 1880, the rat-demon that the Building and Trades chose to blacken, was Delaware’s biggest friend of labor, John Kowalko.

There is something very sick in Delaware’s unions… That this was ever allowed shows complicity with the 1%.

The only people hurt by not putting the power plant inside the University of Delaware, were those investors who spent $800,000 and got nothing. It would be safe to say none of them were of the 99%. When something else goes in, those jobs will be there as well. Labor did not lose one job…

Instead, we just got further proof that in Delaware, labor has been coerced, infiltrated, and is being run by the 1%… No normal working man would want to poison 30,000 people into cancer by his efforts. We all know the 1% have no qualms with killing people as long as they make over 5%…..

Organized labor is no longer working for its members. Whether it is the DSEA, AFSCME, or the Building Trades, the lack of new jobs here in Delaware is due to only one thing. Their coziness with those with money… the big 5 developers and their friend, the governor.

I know the details of why there is a history behind it this coziness.. But there was also a history behind Colonial America and Great Britain… But at some point a split had to occur.

When you have Quisling leaders telling their members that “yeah, they are doing everything they can”, and at the same time telling the Delaware Way that they “got their people handled”, it is their members who are getting royally screwed…..

It is past time to scrap old leaders. It is past time for new aggressive leadership, someone in their 30’s.. It is time for work stoppages again. It is time for muscle… When you have our ex-heroes, “organized labor”, those who built the America we had (at least up through 2000), attacking their most ardent legislative supporter in the General Assembly because he wouldn’t go along and maliciously kill 30,000 of his constituents with cancer, you have a corrupt and poorly lead organization…. They are not working for their members; they are working for Charlie Copeland!

I hereby pull my support for prevailing wage…. and urge John Kowalko and every legislator elected from the Greater Newark Area up through Hockessin to do so as well. …

Until unions get new aggressive leadership who will daringly take on the Delaware Way and grind it up and crush it, forget it, I won’t reconsider.

Reading through it, though it doesn’t dissect and explain by tearing the subject apart in piecemeal, …. it does through its examples provide overwhelming evidence as to why the founding fathers were very emphatic in separating church from state. After all, they had their religious nuts too…as anyone who has read 18th Century early American pamphlets well knows…

Reading this piece makes one understand, if they never did before, the true wisdom of a collection of men, selected by their peers, bestowed upon what at that time was basically a wilderness which became the United States of America…

Religion is personal. Deeply personal. For that reason alone, it needs to be excised from any entity, including government who has to deal with a wide spread of human beings all of which have deep personal freedoms. Both for the Constitution’s Protection, as well as the protection of each and every religion…

By state law, in the Senate, half the districts have elections on a regular election cycle, and the other half have elections on the off cycle… Ten positions are contestable this year and 11 positions will be contestable in 2 years… There are currently two primaries on the list, who afterwards, will face no opponent from another party. Even if someone gets appointed to run by the other party, that opponent just wastes someone’s money.. These elections are totally decided in the primary….

So as far as a change of seats, out of the 10 up for grabs, 3 definitely will be filled by the incumbents and two more will be filled by the same party… 4 of the 10 seats will remain Democratic… One seat is guaranteed to remain Republican The current split in our Senate today is now 12 dems to 9 repubs. That means any change must come from the 5 races being contested by both parties…

These will be:

District 6 where the incumbent is Republican, so even if he wins, no change there… If he loses, one less Republican in the Senate and another piece of Sussex County turns blue.

District 10 where the incumbent is Democrat in a Republican leaning district and could lose to a good Republican.

District 17, where the incumbent is Democrat in a Republican leaning district and could lose to a good Republican.

District 18, where the incumbent is Republican, so even if he wins, no change there… If he loses, one less Republican in the minority.

District 21, where the incumbent is Democratic in a Republican district, and could lose to a good Republican…

So in the best possible scenario for Republicans, if they overturn three seats and hang on to two, at the end of this election cycle, the next two years could give us 12 Republicans to the Democrats 9… giving them control of that chamber…. for the first time in what seems like: since forever…

It appears that Sussex County, Dover, and Delaware City will decide what the late Don King would call: “the fate, of the state….

Now to the House…. Currently running unopposed…. incumbents from these districts

1,2,3,5,7,13,17,23,24,25,26,28,35,36,38,40..… meaning 16 out of 41 state rep districts will have the same human being sitting in the same seat next year… a return rate of 40%…. Of those running in primaries who have no alter other-party opponent, would be these two: Rep. 14 has no Republican; nor does Rep 18 have a Republican challenger…

Giving a total of 18 seats out of the 41 seats which won’t change parties… The current House of Delegates is divided into 27 Democrats and 14 Republicans. To change control they will need 7 switches plus holding on to all their own in order to gain control of the House… 7 seats to switch out of 23 contests..

An outcome that is not too likely.

Therefore we can surmise that the next House side of the General Assembly which will be for Markell’s second half of his second term, will not be very different in any way, from this session…

The battles of personalties will be watched solely for the effect they have on each contender, since in the very big picture, when January rolls around; the House will be the same as it ever was……

Still the Senate looks interesting…. the only place a possible flip could be likely…….